ISIS had written its own Android app, called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, to enable it to spread information via social media. The app allowed users to make their Twitter accounts available to ISIS, so that the organisation could use them to send tweets. On 19 June, Google removed the app from its Android store “for breaching its community guidelines” against violent content.

ISIS seems to be aware of a key aspect of the power of social media&colon; that it is a conversation. Platforms such as Ask.fm, on which users can post questions and give answers anonymously, enable people to have direct conversations with ISIS fighters.

“Terror group communications used to be unidirectional – for instance al-Qaeda publishing its magazine. Twitter and Ask.fm now allow people to have a conversation with, say, an ISIS fighter. And that two-way interaction humanises these guys,” says Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London. “A 19-year-old from Bradford finds a 19-year-old from Leeds in Syria and they find they have a lot in common, making it all a bit more real.”

What do wannabe insurgents ask ISIS?

Ask.fm’s question-and-answer format is providing a handy ask-me-anything platform for young people considering joining ISIS, Maher says. “Ask.fm is a very important service in this regard. It is where people ask fighters practical questions like how they can get out to Syria, and what they should bring with them. Most [respondents] ask that they bring indigestion tablets, books and iPads.”

What measures are being taken to counter ISIS’s presence online?

The Iraqi government has tried various internet address blocking measures in a bid to stop ISIS’s online activities – but its approach has been piecemeal. For instance, it has blocked Facebook, Twitter and the instant messaging site Viber – while leaving known ISIS websites online. When the government has managed to block a site, ISIS has been adept at using proxies to evade it. There has been some success, however. “There has been a purge of ISIS fighters’ Twitter and Instagram accounts recently&colon; we think the British government has had a role in it,” says Maher, whose team are tracking 400 ISIS fighter accounts on a range of online platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Ask.fm and Tumblr.

When asked why it did not use anonymised machine analysis of tweets to pinpoint violent or threatening content, a Twitter spokesman said that would amount to proactive review – something Twitter shuns.